kristo’s blog

what’s the use of astrology???

Not much, you say??

Well, the way I personally use the daily horoscope at kristo.com is to look at the previous day’s horoscope, and see if there are any correlations between the intuitions I’ve written and the subsequent events of my day.

I’ve simply gotta do it this way because, trust me, as soon as I've posted the horoscope, I completely and promptly forget all about it.

The cool thing about this method is that nearly every single day I can see how a predictive intuition came true (so to speak) for me...i.e. how it actually manifested during my day.

And occasionally, I get some very positive feedback reminding me that some readers do the very same thing....

Today I'm gonna start something new...and report some of those personal occurrences....

Not because I’m so interested in tooting my own horn...because really, who (besides my friends and girlfriend) cares what the fuck happens to me during the day...

but because this might be a brilliant way to illustrate how to use a daily horoscope...which is: to exercise your own intuition.

So yesterday I wrote:

“Oh man!

Talk about big!

Today is the day for some all out wild, big, and beautiful installation.

One that requires a huge investment of everything you are.

And not necessarily everything you own...unless of course, you define yourself by that.”

the way it manifested was this:

My parents own a place in upstate NY on some really beautiful farm land...

and yesterday I got to drive up there for the first time since August...

I love being up here...and the experience of this place isn’t something that can easily be put into words...

but last night after dinner I walked outside into the cold country night and threw my head back to look at the stars...

Now even though the light pollution is slowly making its way up here, making it difficult to see the milky way on a typical summer night...well...last night it wasn’t difficult at all...

At first, coming from the brightly lit kitchen into the night darkness I swear I could only see maybe Polaris and Jupiter...

but then slowly, as my eyes adjusted...stars began to pop up and out like mushrooms... and before long...the whole damn sky became that “wild, big, and beautiful installation” that my intuition had somehow known of in the morning.

Of course I was only able to connect that experience with the horoscope after my girlfriend said that she had a similar experience of being all in during her day....

Now...I write the daily horoscope as a kind of personal mandala, meditation, or connection to the unconscious...and it’s a real exercise of my intuition. One that’s maybe not quite as useful as doing cardio or Qi Gong (although at times, it can be as much of a struggle as 45 minutes on the stairmaster) or flipping securities and leveraging debt....

But it’s more along the lines of walking outside to fill a birdfeeder each day...and then going off to start my day....

Whatever and whomever shows up is really none of my business...but doing this every day, I occasionally find the equivalent of a phoenix feather...

Like the one I’ve just told you about.

Have any of you made similar intuitive discoveries based on a daily horoscope...?

Please let me know...

It might be interesting to compare notes...

acts of god...

new dream interpretation at kristo.com today:

“a dark blue commercial jet flew very low over me...suddenly ascended...only to then nose dive and crash into a church a few blocks away....”

not just your run of the mill act of god, this....

more on what’s the use of art...

Dominic Eichler has a piece in the current issue of Frieze Magazine in which he attempts to somewhat obliquely answer that peculiar question...“What’s the use of art?”

You can find his rather interesting article here...

For my part...I find his preamble to be seriously interesting and engaging...but find the myriad particulars of his answer (e.g.“ art is the sibling of language, and sometimes they have good fights”) to be just the sort of thing that drains the Qi right outta me....

But that’s only because there is no “reasonable defence” of art...except maybe the experience of art itself.

And to my mind...that’s the issue. An experience. Because those in the art world couldn’t possibly be in that world unless there was an experiential passion driving them on. And without that experience of passion one would have to be awfully silly to remain there...just as it’s awfully silly to go bowling unless you truly enjoy it, and the friends you go bowling with.

Of course, then there is the professional. But a professional is someone who earns their living exclusively from their activity. And that definition makes amateurs of nearly every artist alive. (Not to mention the fact that a con artist should more properly be referred to as a con professional.) Now, if passion were the main currency...well...not only might art have the highest percentage of passionate professionals...but who then wouldn’t be willing to re-consider engaging more art in their lives tomorrow?

Those who would dismiss art (or bowling, for that matter) for any reason whatsoever can only realize that their experience of art is simply bloodless. Without passion. Or conversely, just too frightening to admit...or return to.

And perhaps the better question then is “Just where do you find your passion?”

Because the answer can only be “That’s where you find your art.”

Art doesn’t need a reason...or a defence. Neither does bowling. But if your passion is in danger of deserting you...well...maybe it’s time to rethink a few things. 

another new dream post...not exactly about an ostrich...

I just succeeded in posting another new free dream interpretation at kristo.com

dreamer particulars:

birthyear: 1968

gender: female

“I am on the second floor of a large, busy shopping mall or school.

I believe I am wearing rollerskates or otherwise gliding quickly (definitely not walking).

There's a flurry of sudden action for a second, and I stop abruptly at a potted plant that overlooks the sides of the second floor onto the ground floor.

At the plant's base lies a very large baby ostrich (that's what it looks like).

It is lying there as if sleeping when it suddenly bursts awake....”

Once again, I think you’ll find my Jungian interpretation interesting...to say the least...

Check here at kristo.com to read the full text of the dream...along with my interpretation...

kristo

Which is more important...the Diploma or the Education?

Files Vanished, Young Chinese Lose the Future

I had wanted to comment on this article in the nytimes...but it must have struck a nerve out there, since they closed the comments...

Anyway, this article really struck a chord with me...

After handing in all of the necessary forms and documents to graduate from medical school, the university administration office lost my libretto...

This was in the 70's, in Italy...a country (and a time) famous for its inscrutably confucian, beautifully handwritten, baroque bureaucratic traditions...

But for all of its faults, it is a country that I dearly love...and not only for having generously and graciously given me my formal medical education and degree...

I don't know how things are today, but the libretto was a one of a kind document that had each of my exams written in it, along with the date of the exam, my grade, and most importantly...the professor's signature...

All of this information was also recorded on computer sheets and signed by the professor (after signing the more personal and dramatic libretto)...

but in those earliest days of personal computers, each of the day's exam sheets were apparently meant to be entered into some university computer database that (as far as we students knew) may or may not have ever existed...

The bottom line was that if I hadn't made photocopies of each of the pages of my libretto, I couldn't have graduated until each of those computer sheets were found...

and I was told that the process could take months...

I was also immensely fortunate to have taken the advice of friends to make those simple photocopies before handing in that amazingly precious document...   

Now as an educator, what I find so subversively and perversely important about this headline is the question of what is ultimately more important...? 

The education (i.e. the educated student)...or the diploma?

In a world where greater and greater numbers of people are being given (or rather going in to debt) buying expensive educations...the number of fraudulent pieces of paper out there must be rather large...

Either that, or we're all being duped into spending literally thousands of dollars having our educational credentials examined, verified, and re-certified every time we make a move....

And so I suppose that we must have both...

The papers (along with the necessarily expensive certified paper sniffers) as well as those graduates who can readily demonstrate their true education...

But producing a bona fide piece of paper is not the same thing as demonstrating an education...!

Or is it?

Of course not...!

But unfortunately, here is compelling evidence for the dominance of the damn piece of paper...bona fide or not...

what an awful shame!

...and yet there but for the grace...

a new dream post...

I'm working hard at a few too many things at once right now...

(and somehow that seems to translate into “hardly working...”

but I just succeeded in posting a new free dream interpretation at kristo.com

the dreamer:

age: 69

gender: male

birthplace: Mississippi

“I woke up 4 times thinking i was going to the post office to work, and though i was going to be late..........i'm retired and never worked at a post office.”

I think you’ll find my Jungian interpretation interesting...to say the least...and maybe even something to write home about...

Check right here for my full interpretation...

it was a colorful and pleasant 4th this year...

my little flip video is pretty handy for collecting small things that catch my eye...

but I can see that a much better quality image is necessary for YouTube... 

Richard Hunt is a giant...

so here it is...

my official review of:

Richard Hunt at David Weinberg Gallery Chicago
April 17 – May 30, 2009 

maybe it's too late for the show in question...

but Richard Hunt is much bigger than any single show...

and his work is timeless...

Richard Hunt’s public work is ubiquitous enough in Chicago that nearly everyone here can get intimate with at least one piece from his extraordinary oeuvre.

My opportunity began in 1992 after a show at the now defunct Terra Museum…a show in which I was enthralled not simply by his expertise with metal and abstraction…but by the integrity of his metaphors….

And because of that show I became interested in and intimate with a 3 part work by Hunt dedicated to John Peter Altgeld (an Illinois Governor whose fame is apparently of the positive variety)…and located nearly a stone’s throw from his DePaul neighborhood atelier.

I’ll leave the story of my Richard Hunt / Caspar David Friedrich night for another time…but knowing that every experience of Hunt’s sculpture can be a potential encounter with the sublime…I was drawn to opening night of his recent show at David Weinberg in Chicago, like a moth to the flame.

Now a gallery opening is neither the place nor time to study an artist’s work…but watching the calm, affable, unassuming figure of Richard Hunt move within the crowd of both well-wishers and his own work was a revelation.

Richard Hunt’s sculpture generally reveals 3 basic metaphors…

One is what I call the Bridge. A sense of iron / steel bridgework that most often speaks of Integration…in the best sense of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s work.

In this show, it was most vividly represented by the non-organic forms of a 1974 Untitled lithograph. Forms that supported organic, vine forms or plants…not in decay, like Roman ruins…but much more contemporary, and optimistic…almost prescient…relating to the changes vis à vis our country’s new presidency.

Two is what I call Oppression / Compression. Organic curves and sweeps, buds and branches that reveal the strength and vigor of new growth. A natural vitality manifesting despite the ruthless pruning or heavy handed restrictions of Discrimination.

Hybrid Totem, a 2007 bronze piece readily demonstrates this metaphor as something of an abstract, pruned grapevine. A form whose emphasis is not as much on the forces that shaped it…as it is on the simple vigor and exuberant life it manifests. Comparing this piece with a 1980 color screenprint entitled Purple…one can see that even back then…before the work of the Bridge metaphor had come to today’s fruition…there was good wine being made from these grapes. And it’s as if the artist was a visionary predicting today’s change.

But instead this is one of Richard Hunt’s enduring and most remarkable strengths…. that there is no bitterness in his Compressive metaphor. There is only sober strength, calm growth and optimism, and even a bit of giddy celebration.

The 3^rd metaphor, Flight, is the one most easy to observe. A nuanced example is Sculptured Place II. A whimsical bronze combination of mosque, cathedral, and Gehry opera house paradoxically sitting in the luscious forms of some beautiful liquid mud flat. As if the religious spirit in man requires just such rich alchemical depth in order to achieve the great heights Hunt apparently knows and trusts.

Richard Hunt doesn’t create meaningless abstraction….

And he doesn’t pose emasculated, intellectual conundrums for only cognoscenti to enjoy…

He surprises and delights.

And in this show I was surprised by what I sense to be a 4^th, new metaphor. One that could be called Play. A mixture of heavy, compressive, yet fluid forms with an immersion into depth.

It seems apparent in a startlingly different 2008 piece called Posiedon…with the form of a whale’s tail diving beneath some common oceanic threshold. And then seems confirmed in the 2001 piece Low Flight…with forms and rivets suggestive of an aircraft wing…yet possessing that same curious tail indicative of playful energy immersed in this compressed and concentrated form.

Among numerous delights were wonderful (and surprising) Self-Portraits…most notably perhaps was Incline With Rising Curve. An elegant homage to Julio Gonzalez with a cheeky reference to Chicago’s own Picasso…and saying here, as with each of the Self-Portraits…Twisted Fiddler, Legeresque, Harlequin, and Form in Evolution...I stand not alone, but on the shoulders of giants.

Well…there’s a new giant for the rest of us, and he lives (and works) in the City of Broad Shoulders.

Richard Hunt on a wild night in 1992...

Walking home from my office one mild October evening...and passing the northeast corner of Jonquil Playlot Park with Richard Hunt’s homage to John Peter Altgeld...(one Illinois Governor who actually deserved some genuine praise) it began raining like hell...

But the cool thing was, that there was heavy thunder with lightning flashing practically non-stop...and despite the rain (and possible danger), I stopped to watch...knowing that somehow this was a show that just shouldn’t be missed...

Fortunately for me, I was carrying my plastic Arrow camera...

My Arrow was a cheapo Diana clone whose shutter spring had finally given up the ghost after way too few rolls of film...leaving me with a toy camera that was pretty much useless except in two very particular situations.

One of those situations was meant for the near future, as I had decided to turn it into a pinhole camera. The shutter could be held open by tape...and closed whenever I figured I'd waited long enough for a decent exposure...

(and boy oh boy...did that ever get me into trouble...but that's another cool image and story for another day...)

So this other ideal situation for my poor, overworked Arrow...was staring me right in the face...

First of all...rain couldn't hurt my plastic camera in the least...

and second...holding the shutter open in the near pitch dark of the night would produce no image until one of those bolts of lightning would enter the frame...

I can't even describe to you how excited I was to be standing there and catching lightning on film...while that same lightning was actually illuminating something way more extraordinary than the night sky...

I just stood there with my heart pounding and tried to calmly frame my shots...focusing on those sculptures I respected and knew so nearly intimately...

and let the lightning (like some fantastic, sublime strobe light) do the rest...

And I use that word sublime maybe because I felt kinda like the way Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings look/ed to me...

and when I finally ran out of film...I was so excited and happy I was shaking inside...and so maybe those paintings really do come closest to describing the way I felt...

As if I had just been in one...

And I sure as hell just knew that some of those negatives were gonna turn out well and maybe show something of what had just happened to me...

I suppose the concept of a "peak experience" makes sense in this context...

But all I knew was that I felt more alive than ever...

Even if all I was doing was standing out in the rain with a toy camera, looking at some mildly abstract sculpture...

That October night was back in 1992...

about 4 years after the sculptures were created...but only 3 months after I had first studied Richard Hunt’s work...and I found that work to be maybe not so aesthetically beautiful...but conceptually, his work is always born of absolute artistic and human integrity...and his work easily and generously shares that integrity with whomever has any time at all to spend with it...  

Richard Hunt doesn’t create meaningless abstraction.... Far from it...

And he doesn’t pose some emasculated, intellectual conundrums for only cognoscenti to enjoy...

But (for now) I digress...

It has taken me all these years to get back to the task of scanning those negatives of that wild and happy night...

and now I have hopes of producing something more polished, coherent, satisfying and communicative than the many workprints of them I had produced so sporadically...

and so these negatives...which I hope to do some real digital justice to, constitute yet another important piece of my beloved, but terribly piecemeal photo portfolio...

Now that it’s nearly impossible for me to return to a darkroom...doing the best I can with whatever digital equipment I’ve got has suddenly taken a real shot in the arm...

and Richard Hunt’s late / latest show here in Chicago seems to have provided that boost of energy and enthusiasm....

I'm currently working on my notes and images from the show...and will soon have plenty more to say about Richard Hunt’s marvelous work...but getting back to these images after 17 years...i.e. my own work...is just a pleasure, despite the time devouring horrors of digital techno-hell and steep, slippery learning curves for this hard-and-soft-ware impaired photo geek / art critic....

Man...! I really was old school 35 mm, you know...? Doing my own color film and print processing... (that Jobo processor with the lift was a dream!)

and for sure...color was, and still is my favorite medium... thanks to some timely, perceptive, and sage advice from Robert Clarke-Davis...

The other half of his seriously helpful advice was to work harder and build up my portfolio...

so...despite the many unphotogenic detours I’ve often taken...I'm actually doing just that...

now I have to figure out why photoshop is taking so damn long to scan my second Richard Hunt Eagle negative...

At this distinctly Capricornian rate, my best work is all gonna find itself called Posthumous...    

Père Lachaise...

Okay...really....

I swear!

I’m on my way to the David Weinberg Gallery (one of the very best in Chicago) to see and take notes on the rest of the work in the Richard Hunt show....

I've been so busy with school and teaching and making a living that really living almost always has to take a back seat...

And for me...really living involves chewing on the metaphors of really great art.

But in order to find great art to chew on, sometimes it's necessary to take in all sorts of mediocrities...

and then actually figuring out that something is mediocre takes time...and attention....

I can’t simply write somebody’s work off as a mediocrity unless I’ve actually penetrated the metaphor...

And all of this takes time that I too often just don’t have...

(or worse...I've got...but can’t seem to change gears quickly enough to utilize.)

Maybe there’s an easier way than the one I choose to follow...which is to actually treat work as genuine art...until proven otherwise...but there’s no reliable shortcut that I've ever heard of...

I once asked a Famous Art Critic who lectured to us how she deals with the need to spend so much time with new work....

and her answer always struck me as cavalier...

She said that if it took her longer than 5 minutes to figure out the metaphor, she would essentially trash the work....

Of course now I can certainly appreciate her sense of Capricorn efficiency...

But I guess I'm personally intrigued by any and all so-called art works...good or bad...at least as a manifestation of the artist’s psyche...

Although I must say...that if somebody produces a whole lotta mediocrity...I can be awfully bored and disappointed...and not at all inclined to offer the gift of constructive criticism....

And then there's the obvious question...

Why not rely on the curatorial labors of one museum or another where "great works" tend to be reliably on display...?

And of course, I've got a long winded answer to that...

but let's just say that so many great museums are really not much more than art cemeteries...with a bunch of impressionist headstones and a few renaissance headstones and plenty of baroque headstones, etc...not to mention the picasso headstones scattered all over the place....

Visit one cemetery / museum like this and you’ve pretty much visited them all....

it's not the work I object to...or the artists...but the fact that it’s almost impossible to chew on master works when they’re presented (as they usually are) like just so many headstones in Père Lachaise....

Okay...it’s already getting late...and I gotta get moving or this Richard Hunt show is gonna close before I can finish writing about it....